


The Creature of Earth

by Kheodur



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 23:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13087467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kheodur/pseuds/Kheodur
Summary: Inaho has a warm and sad look.





	The Creature of Earth

The prison cell is distastefully gray; it feels like a real cage with its suffocating air of boredom and hopelessness.

Slaine can no longer cry - all his tears had remained on Mars, on the Princess’ hands, on her pearly white dress. There is nothing, nothing left for him. Nothing to mourn himself for, nothing for his troubled and scarred soul to be finally free.

He has only his window and Inaho.

The window is small, and it shows only a piece of blue sky, blue as the waters of Earth. 

The Earth has so much water and air that they refract the light!

No. It’s the Rayleigh scattering.

***

The view from the window doesn’t change, and it feels like Inaho doesn’t too.

He always wears the same look - it seems indifferent, heartless.

But Inaho has a warm and sad look. The eye patch silently hides the empty eye socket, dark hair fall onto his eyes.

It is a bit fun, but Inaho is similar to a horse. Slaine doesn’t know if it’s his sad eyes or his strangely docile nature - but he remembers that when he was a child his father had taken him to the stables, and a big brown heavy horse there was leaning its nose under his hand and kept sadly snorting.

Slaine wants to pat Inaho - he almost doesn’t care that Inaho is the one to blame for trapping him in this prison cell. He wants the warmth so much.

***

“You look like a horse,” Slaine says quietly when Inaho comes to see him once again. He has not slept for three nights because he wakes up in tears. He doesn’t want to see freedom, he doesn’t want to see the happiness he had lost.

“And you look like you’ve been going too long without sleep,” Inaho echoes and leads Slaine away to the room despite the surprised looks of the guards.

Inaho’s steps are soft and smooth - Slaine vaguely recalls his father’s old stories in which the horses were born by the wind. But who is Sleipnir?

“Orange,” Slaine raises his hand and lightly strokes Inaho’s cheek. “Who is Sleipnir?”

“The divine eight-legged horse that runs between the living world and the dead world and carries the people who died in battles to Valhalla.” Inaho touches Slaine’s hand, puzzled.

Slaine breathes quietly and pulls Inaho’s head to himself. His hair is tousled and uncut - apparently he didn’t have time to get a haircut. His dark strands tickle Slaine’s neck.

Slaine wants to sleep, to sleep without dreams, he wants someone else’s warmth and caresses, and so he doesn’t let go of Inaho and keeps mindlessly stroking his hair and neck.

Inaho doesn’t resist. Slaine sleeps without dreams.

***

“Are you really so weird or you just pretend?”

Slaine laughs almost to tears when one day Inaho gets him out of the four walls of his prison for a walk - most likely he does that at the cost of several sleepless weeks.

It is the day that - afterwards - Slaine wants to replay again and again in his memory.

The freedom is already graced by summer; Inaho’s car drowns in greenery; they stop amidst the endless fields of grass - the Earth heals itself.

Slaine closes his eyes and wonders for how long he’s been locked up - for a year or two?

He almost chokes when Inaho takes his hand in his.

“Orange?”

“Be silent,” Inaho commands quietly, closes his only eye and lowers himself into the tall grass. His movements are unhurried and smooth; Slaine obediently lies down near him, gasping from the scent of the freedom. 

“It’s beautiful here...”

“Quiet,” Inaho whispers, leaning against Slaine’s chest - it feels so right at the moment. Slaine holds him close; Inaho dozes off under the sun.

While Inaho sleeps, Slaine lets his fingers wander over the back of his head and takes off the tight eye-patch that hides the dead eye. Gently he removes the hair from Inaho’s forehead and suddenly feels himself older by a few centuries. 

Then he leans over Inaho’s face - calm and suddenly seeming very young - and kisses the barely noticeable scars above the empty eye-socket.

***

“Why did you say that I look like a horse?” The white knight is closing on the black chevalier.

“It’s your look.” The Queen gets in the way of the knight to protect the chevalier.

“My look?” Inaho turns away from the black-and-white chess board.

Slaine gently touches his warm cheek with the back of his hand.

“It’s warm and sad.”

Inaho looks down and collects the chess pieces.

They stay silent until the end, catching each other’s looks.

***

Slaine doesn’t remember when his love for the Princess is gone. He doesn’t understand when all his tenderness starts to pour out into his meetings with Inaho. Slaine doesn’t want to let him go.

When Inaho once again gets him out of the cell - what are the higher-ups thinking? - it is snowing. Slaine asks to take him to the field.

He takes off his locket and gently clasps the chain around Inaho’s neck.

“Never take it off.”

Inaho offers him the Princess’ necklace, holding it on the open palm of his hand, but Slaine drops it into the snow as if discarding the unnecessary memories.

Slaine gently puts his hand onto Inaho’s dark mop of hair and strokes it. Inaho closes his eye.

The Creature of Earth stands before Slaine; it travels between the worlds and now has come to take Slaine to the world of peace and freedom. Slaine takes Inaho’s hand in his and feels then Inaho raising himself a little and giving him a kiss.

Slaine feels the absolute peace.

 

When years later the former prisoner wakes up not from the nightmares, but from the quiet sigh next to him, when he catches the calm and the warm look, when his fingers start playing with the locket on the other's chest, Slaine knows.

The Earth belongs to him and no one else.


End file.
